Shooting from the Hip Carlos Kambaekwa So, the old adage that a leopard never changes its spots has come back to haunt some dickheads within our sport fraternity big time, because it appears that some souls just don’t listen or learn despite being bitten so many times, never mind once – there is just no retreat into the comfort of reluctance. I’m almost certain even the great philosopher Plato would have been at a loss for words to find a suitable lingo on how to describe the latest antics in some of the domestic sporting disciplines which really take one down memory lane, only to get stuck at the open space in Hosea Kutako Avenue where the old Bantu Hospital was located slightly opposite the railway station, in later years to become the home of Boswell Wilkie. Ja outies, those were the not-so-attractive ol’ days of “Yes and Amen” when anything uttered by any moegoe with a different skin pigmentation from ours was perceived to be cool and not to be disputed, unless you had the pluck to get yourself entangled with the itchy baton-wielding Bowkers’ boys, ja my brra !! those were the days and I so wish real toughies like the notorious habitual jailbird “Ou Windhoek” from Dolam were around to relay the tales. A significant number of local sport administrators are proving to be from the old school and know exactly how to wangle themselves out of tight corners should the situation demand, notably when their time in office is up. What do Athletics and Netball have in common? Well, both codes are traveling the same precipitous path of self-destruction through different routes only to arrive at the same destination by chance. Any average thinking soul who follows sport in the domestic setup should have had at least a sketchy raison d’ÃÆ’Æ‘Æ‘ÃÆ”šÃ‚ªtre as to what led to the demise of Athletics in this country, but not so my brra, there are always a few wankers out there who would rather embrace the township style adopted by Brra A and his bunch of freeloaders. Almost the entire usually ineffective Executive of the All Namibia Netball Association (ANNA) was re-elected at the Association’s Annual General Congress at the Waterberg Plato Park Resort near Okakarara, last weekend. The Association’s invisible President Carol Garoes, has re-surfaced again after a retreat into some pages in pursuit of knowledge in the United States, an exercise which brought the ladies game to a virtual standstill while the auntie was polishing her admin skills over-seas. As it stands, the only regions currently pushing the spherical ball around are Khomas, Erongo and to a lesser extent Hardap, while the remaining ten regions are totally ineffective on the courts only to throw their weight around on the green table during election time. Please don’t get me wrong, of course netball is being played in most of these regions but only restricted to school level, which falls under the auspices of the National Schools Sport Union (NSSU), finish and klaar !!. In years gone by, netball used to be amongst the most flourishing disciplines in Namibia and was only rated second best on the African continent behind South Africa and 14th in the world, but this particular sport code has since taken a spiral path downwards and the team has become the whipping lasses in the Southern African region. Sometimes leaders should be bold enough and ask themselves whether they have done enough to justify re-election or is it not perhaps time to step aside and allow space for new blood to come in. If you can’t stand the heat in the kitchen, please ship out. Namibian Netball has hit a snag and would need a Herculean act to get the once blossoming code out of its current slough and restore it to its former glory days, and that would mean a complete overhaul of the Association, starting from the top down to the basement. After all, is it not the current Executive that tried to fool the nation into believing that a second string National Side are the undisputed African Champions after a meaningless two-nation tourney which saw the Namibians coming out tops against minnows Ghana in Accra. I think the time has come for everybody who claims to love sport to stand up and be counted and some sport officers surely need to be called to order, because these dudes have developed a habit of overstepping their mandate, at times acting as they are elected members of various sport codes. Trouble has been brewing in the corridors of both the Netball and Athletics disciplines over a significant period with authorities flexing their muscles and promising to get to the root of the fiasco, but up to now, yours truly and his subjects are still waiting in limbo for the findings, recommendations, and more importantly, what action to be taken, so I rest my case. Heitarra !!, it’s time to call it quits – so until next Friday, I’m off.